Between You and Me

by Susan Wiggs

  The doctor called Jimenez gave a simple nod and said, “Thank you for being here. We’re taking good care of . . .” He glanced at the white marker board on the wall. “Of Jonah.”

  The third-years seemed curious about Caleb, particularly the women. That was something Caleb hadn’t been able to ignore since being here. Women tended to stare at him, not in the way of tourists who came to the general merchandise shop back home, but in a way any red-blooded man would recognize.

  Reese must have noticed the staring, too, as she gave him a nudge and whispered, “You seem to have a peculiar effect on them.”

  He felt his ears turn as red as Jonah’s. “Don’t be a ninny,” he muttered. He didn’t dislike it, but with Jonah so bad off, all this female attention didn’t seem right. At the very least, it was a distraction.

  Reese was a distraction, too, but in a different way. In a way that kept him thinking about her, even when his mind was supposed to be on helping Jonah. In the small room, she stood with her back to him, pressing close to make room for the doctors. Her hair smelled like flowers, and there was a stray curl at the nape of her neck, dark against the pale, delicate skin.

  He reminded himself of the reason he was here—to listen and observe and try to figure out what was best for Jonah, not to make friends. Not to have thoughts about Reese Powell.

  The head doctor called on one of the student doctors to present the case. Grasping his digital tablet like Moses on the mountain, the young fellow pushed his spectacles up his nose as his gaze flickered around the room.

  Reese turned to whisper in his ear, “Nerves. He reminds me of me last year, when I was new.”

  “If he’s as smart as you, he’ll get over it,” Caleb whispered back, bending to speak into her ear. Standing so close to her was an exercise in self-restraint, for sure.

  She turned again and looked up at him, her voice just a breath against his chest. “Plunging into the world of medicine is kind of like diving into icy water—breathtaking, barely survivable. Panic-inducing. The stakes are so high.”

  “I don’t want anybody panicking over Jonah,” Caleb murmured.

  “Dr. Jimenez would never let that happen. But oral case presentations are hard. Lots of pressure to get it right, because it’s the way doctors share the patient’s story with other doctors. It takes practice. You have to explain the patient’s issues, the goal being to find the best way to care for him.”

  The young man presenting Jonah’s case spoke in a nervous monotone and kept referring to the admissions notes on his tablet. “This is Jonah Stoltz, an eleven-year-old boy, hospital day three, being treated following irreparable loss of blood supply and function of the arm following acute trauma from the blades of an agricultural shredder. At twenty-eight hours post-op, the patient was moved from the surgical ICU to the pediatric unit. Patient appears well, states injuries are feeling better.”

  Caleb clenched his jaw, his mind flashing on Jonah’s arm—irreparable loss of blood supply. Those images wouldn’t leave him for a very long time.

  “He shouldn’t look down,” Reese whispered. “That’s a no-no with Dr. Jimenez. He’s letting his nerves get the better of him. I feel bad for the guy.”

  “Is that a problem for Jonah?” Caleb was interested in protocol, but his main concern was for his nephew.

  “Not a problem. He seems to understand the clinical information, but he’s struggling to be concise.”

  “. . . vitals are normal, pulse range sixty to eighty beats per minute, BP one hundred over sixty, O2 saturation ninety-nine on room air . . .”

  “Let’s hear from Dr. Grandjean,” said the attending, rescuing the previous doctor from the pained recitation.

  A woman wearing a neat headband, her scrubs and white coat crisply pressed, stepped forward like a Girl Scout who knew all the rules. “Jonah’s health history is remarkable only in the sense that it’s unremarkable. He’s had no major childhood illnesses and his immunizations are up to date.”

  Reese glanced at Caleb, a question in her eyes.

  “It’s not against Ordnung,” he whispered.

  “He lives in Middle Grove,” the woman continued, “an Amish community in Carbon County, north of here near the Poconos. His family observes Amish traditions. He has a sister named Hannah, who is sixteen, and they live with their uncle and legal guardian, Caleb Stoltz.” She paused to turn toward Caleb to acknowledge him with a glance. He nodded ever so slightly. Sure, he was Jonah’s guardian. “Legal” was pushing it a tad.

  “Jonah’s parents are both deceased,” the student doctor added.

  Now they were probably all imagining the entire Stoltz family getting shredded like cornstalks. Caleb wondered how much of this Jonah was taking in. Judging by the boy’s somber expression, he was taking it all in.

  The attending physician looked Jonah in the eye and said, “Although this young man’s history isn’t remarkable, his recovery has been.” Jimenez enumerated the technical aspects of the case, yet the whole time, he addressed Jonah with a warm smile. “All this nonsense we’ve been jabbering about, my friend, means you’re far ahead of the curve. That’s something to be proud of.”

  Jonah craned his neck and his gaze flicked to Caleb, who offered a reassuring smile. “That’s a good kind of pride,” he said, then repeated it in German.

  Dr. Jimenez and his followers left, each sparing a smile for Jonah as they filed out of the room.

  Caleb walked over to the bed. “You push this button if you need anything at all, neh? Even just to say hello. The folks here know how to send for me and I’ll come right away.”

  “Ja. Ich verstehe.” His nephew yawned and snuggled down into the blue cotton blanket. Caleb read to him from the Harry Potter book, but after a few moments, the boy couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Good night, my little man,” Caleb murmured. He switched to their dialect and added, “Sleep well.” Then he placed a hand on Jonah’s head, brushing his thumb ever so gently across his forehead. “Sweet dreams.”

  Jonah’s smile was brave and heartbreaking. “G’night, Uncle Caleb.”

  Reese stayed quiet as they left the hospital. Caleb was surprised to see a sheen of tears in her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, noticing his look. “It’s . . . this is hard. I know that one of these days, I’m going to have to get used to this—seeing a patient’s pain and his family’s fear. But today is not that day.”

  In his community, there wasn’t a lot of showing feelings, and even less of talking about them. He wondered if it was the same with hospital folks. Unlike many Amish, he didn’t mind a show of emotion, not one bit. It just seemed honest and human.

  “It was strange to hear them talking about him like that. They have a lot of information about Jonah, but it’s not who Jonah is.”

  She dabbed at her eyes. “Tell me something about your nephew.”

  A softness came over Caleb, the familiar wave of sentiment that always struck him when he thought of Jonah. “There’s plenty to tell. He’s a boy who loves his dog and can whistle louder than a train. He knows how to make a fire with only flint and steel. He has a laugh that sounds like music, and he can do several birdcalls. His specialty is the whippoorwill.” He paused, feeling a prickly warmth in his throat as he swallowed hard. “He’s a boy whose entire future changed in a split second.”

  He didn’t usually speak in so forthright a fashion, unfiltered and honest in his feelings, but something in her manner invited him to show his heart. She was a hazard to him in that way, for sure.

  7

  Reese awoke with a start, sitting straight up in bed and pressing both fists to her chest. Mornings happened this way sometimes. A lot of the time. She burst from sleep with a feeling of panic so sharp it felt like a heart attack. She was used to the unpleasantness by now. The panic attacks had started when she was in college and had continued unabated through medical school, intense but unfocused, impossible to escape.

  The racing heart, the lungs clawing for air, the cold sweat were familiar dem
ons, erupting from a feeling that she had forgotten something or missed something or failed in some crucial way. Over time, she had taught herself a calming routine—self-talk, yoga, meditation, vile-tasting herbal teas, outright denial—but the techniques didn’t always work.

  The one thing she didn’t do was tell someone. She knew the condition was common and that there were effective treatments, but reaching out for help seemed to be another kind of failure, not to mention a source of worry for her parents. They were so ambitious and so successful. They had given her everything and the moon and then some. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint them.

  She got out of bed and dropped into her favorite yoga pose—downward-facing dog—feeling a rush of blood to the head. Closing her eyes, she took a breath deep into her lungs and held it there for five beats of her heart. Then she let it out slowly for another five beats. She repeated the sequence ten more times, bringing herself back into balance.

  Shaking off a nagging exasperation, she took a hurried shower, forced a coffee through a sealed pod, and drank it black. Then she scrawled one more thing on her to-do list: Buy milk.

  What do you do on your day off?

  Caleb’s simple question had lodged itself under her skin. She had a meeting up in New Hope to talk about a residency program, but that wasn’t until much later. Today, she was determined to not be boring. Life was supposed to be interesting, exciting, unpredictable. Some of the best doctors she knew played piano or wrote novels or created pottery sculptures. She should take a glass-blowing class, or go rock climbing in the Poconos, or attend a cutting-edge performance at Jazz Works. Only to herself would she admit that all she really wanted to do was hang out with Caleb Stoltz. He was the most interesting thing she had come across in a very long time.

  Her phone rang, and she jumped. Joanna Powell, MD. “Hey, Mom.”

  “What’s your plan for your day off?”

  “Funny you should ask. I was thinking of going rock climbing, and then to aerial yoga, and after that I was going to hang out with an Amish horse handler.”

  Her mom laughed. “Right. So I had a cancellation at lunch. Let’s meet at the Flying Dutchman around noon. We can go over your strategy for the Match.”

  Again. The Match had dominated their conversations for the past year or longer. “When did you stop listening to me, Mom?”

  “I always listen.”

  “But you don’t hear me.”

  “Fine. I’m all ears. What do you want me to hear?”

  “That I’m having second thoughts about the Match.”

  “Whoa, Nellie. Too late for that. You’re nearly there. All you need to do is figure out the best ranking for your residency programs.”

  “I realize that, but—”

  “Then we should definitely get together and talk things through. If not lunch, then drinks later? We have dinner plans with the Josephsons. You remember them, don’t you? He’s a professor emeritus at Drexel. And she’s a Guggenheim fellow . . .”

  While her mother nattered on, Reese wandered over to the window. She watched pedestrians streaming up and down the avenue, hurrying to and from work. A tall man in black and white instantly caught her eye. Caleb was heading for the hospital. It was not only his height that made him stand out; it was the long strides and focused energy with which he moved that drew her attention. She could hear her mother’s voice, but the words blended together, a constant stream of verbiage that she had heard all her life.

  During a pause in her mother’s monologue, she said, “I can’t make it to lunch. Maybe another day, okay? Give my love to Daddy.”

  She rang off, grabbed her things, and dashed out the door. Do something interesting. Fine. She was all over that. First stop, a kombucha bar that featured live sitar music and a meditative chant.

  She lasted about forty minutes, her brain refusing to cooperate with the chant, which urged her to free her mind and empty her thoughts. All she could think about was work, and Caleb Stoltz, and the Match, and Caleb Stoltz, and her mother, and Caleb . . . Having failed to find her spiritual center, she stepped outside and took out her phone to call a friend. Yes, she should call a friend and suggest a . . . what? A get-together over coffee? A drive to the country?

  Yes, it was a good plan. With a swipe of her finger, she slid through the list of contacts. There was one problem. To her great embarrassment, she was woefully short on friends. She had work people. She had colleagues. Fellow students in her program. She went on occasional random dates that at best left her with a temporary warm glow and at worst served only to magnify her essential aloneness. There simply wasn’t anyone she could legitimately call a friend.

  Aha. Lorraine Kavorkian, whose singularly unfortunate name had sparked all manner of comment. She’d been a mentor through Reese’s first year of med school, and they’d been friends ever since—the kind of friends who were too busy to get together. Reese called her, but—no surprise—it went straight to voice mail. “This is Dr. Lorraine Kavorkian—no relation; it’s a different spelling. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911. Otherwise, leave me a message.”

  “It’s Reese Powell, no emergency, just wondering if you’d like to hang out today. Short notice, I know . . .” She left her number and rang off, doubtful that Lorraine would call her back.

  She thought of another prospect, Didi Cobb, her best friend from middle school, who had reconnected with her recently on a social media site. “So, hey,” said the voice-mail message. “I never answer my phone and I don’t check voice mail.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Reese muttered. “I don’t, either.”

  “Send me a text, K?” concluded Didi’s voice.

  Reese moved on. The final prospect was Trini Sizemore, a career librarian who had invited Reese to join her monthly book club, a social circle of well-read women who were passionate about literature and wine. Reese read all the books, but almost never managed to attend the meetings. And it was her loss, because the club members always served incredible appetizers and desserts. When her turn to host had come around, she’d been so appalled at the state of her apartment and kitchen that she’d booked a private salon at the Hotel Geneva and had the event catered. It turned out to be the ideal way to alienate a group of women who often struggled to make ends meet.

  But Trini had been super nice, and she had amazing taste in books.

  To Reese’s surprise, Trini picked up after a couple of rings. “Reese? Hey, stranger. Long time no see.”

  “Hey, yourself. Listen, this is very spur of the moment, but I was just wondering if you’d like to get together later today.”

  “Gosh, that sounds fantastic,” Trini said. “I would so love to catch up. Wow, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? A year at least. But . . .”

  The inevitable but. “You’re probably busy,” Reese said.

  “I am, like you wouldn’t believe. Remember Bill, my barely adequate boyfriend?”

  “You mentioned him a few times. Did he get upgraded to adequate?”

  “No. He got upgraded to complete asshole and I broke up with him. But he had a friend—Jory—and he’s amazing. We fell in love and got married and had a baby, all in the past year.”

  Reese choked back her surprise. “Trini, that’s great. And a baby. Wow, you didn’t waste any time.”

  “When you know it’s right, you don’t hesitate. Timothy was born at St. Rocco’s, and he’s great. Five weeks old yesterday. I’m completely overwhelmed—in the best possible way. But all this domestic bliss definitely puts a damper on my spontaneity.”

  “Well, I’m thrilled for you,” said Reese.

  “Thanks. It all happened so fast. We had a getaway wedding, just the two of us and our parents in Bermuda, and then I got pregnant right away—who saw that coming, at my age?—and here I am! On top of everything else, we just bought a house out in Wayne, and it’s a fixer-upper. I feel guilty about not letting my friends know.”

  “Don’t you dare feel guilty. Seriously, my hat is of
f to you. Sounds as if the pieces fell into place and you went for it. I’m going to remember that just in case some pieces fall my way. You’re a great reminder that there’s more to life than studying and work.”

  “Pieces will fall,” Trini promised. “You just don’t get to say when, or how, or with whom, so keep an eye out. Makes things interesting. Listen—hear that?” She paused, and the sound of a bleating lamb came through the phone.

  Reese sighed. “Hi, Timothy. I hope I get to meet you one of these days.”

  “Let’s make it happen. Sorry, I have to go now. I—”

  “Of course. Give me a call when things settle down. Talk to you soon.” Reese hung up. “And by ‘soon,’ I mean probably never.”

  She studied the kombucha she’d bought. It tasted vile, but she’d paid nine bucks for it, so she choked it down as she walked home in defeat.

  Leroy was in the foyer, getting his mail.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “You look as if you just lost your best friend.”

  “Worse than that,” she said. “I’ve come to the realization that I don’t actually have a best friend. I don’t really have any friends.”

  “What am I, chopped liver?”

  “You’re my neighbor. And a guy. I’m supposed to have girlfriends, and we’re supposed to go out for drinks and talk about men and share all our secrets, the way they do on the medical TV shows.”

  “That’s why you became a doctor, because you actually thought it was like that?” He gave a bark of laughter. “Joke’s on you.” He tucked the stack of mail under one arm and gave her a brief hug with the other. “Come on. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. I’m your friend.”

  “You’re my work friend,” she pointed out, sinking deeper into the swamp of self-pity. “A best friend is someone you’ve known all your life, someone you’ve shared all your secrets with. I didn’t even know you grew up Amish.”

  “Listen, I just finished a shift, and I have the rest of the day off. Let’s hang out.”